96. On Body and Soul

1.) Natural science creates the necessity for man to know himself. But it contains no means of acquiring such knowledge. Behavior of natural scientists: Nägeli, Hertwig, Ziehen.

2.) In discussions about scientific questions, e.g. about the life force, I am always on the side of the natural scientists: according to du Bois Reymond. But he too used a dictum to inhibit the transition into the spiritual realm.

3.) One cannot speak of a speculated life force, but one can speak of a perceivable body of formative forces. But in order for such perception to come about, mere imagining must be transformed into perception. The “seer” and the “non-seer”. —

4.) For a long time, only body and soul have been spoken of. This was acceptable as long as the soul was attributed spiritual properties. When this was no longer done, the natural consequence was “psychology without soul”.

5.) The spirit cannot be known through the usual soul experiences. Not even if these are “mystically” intensified.

The physiologist says: a chemical change in the blood is necessary for the feeling of hunger. The spiritual researcher says: for an idea to have a will-arousing effect, it must undergo a change in its imaginative content.

6.) One speaks of the phenomena of the soul in such a way that one regards as its laws precisely that which causes the spirit to perish: associations.

7.) Drawing from the “I”, which is “spirit” after all.

8.) In the soul, mere sensing, etc. of the truth, the soul allows a glimpse of a supernatural world, etc. The spirit allows it to be recognized: it is the eternal.

Du Bois Reymond believed that where supernaturalism begins, science ends: a future view of the world will only recognize a knowledge of nature to the extent that it is based on supernaturalism:

Where supernaturalism ends, science dies.

Because you have: atoms without content.

Laws without entities.

Apparitions of souls without ego entities, etc.

In ordinary life, the soul does not have the strength to know itself as “spirit”. It has even less strength to recognize the spirit in the outside world. In the outside world, the soul encounters the supersensible when it becomes more powerful within. When the ability to live in mere imagination is developed, when it is heightened to an imaginative cognitive faculty, then the world of life presents itself as an impression from the outside – one gets to know the different pace between one's own and the foreign course of life – for this it is necessary to go back 2-3 days in one's life – then behind it lies the true soul. This is no longer influenced by the remnants of sensation - to see it as a product of the brain would be like wanting to see the table or another person as a product of the brain, because one knows: with everything one is through the brain, one stands outside of this true soul. It includes practical realization: Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu nisi ipses intellectus. —

This “true soul” must not evoke dreams or fantasies, or even visions or hallucinations. For all these arise through the bodily organism: what is no longer bodily must be sensed like an external object -: one returns to the sensation - one senses the “spirit”.